I want to look at some of the more common pieces of advice that people here as they float through the vast ocean of writing, publishing and so on. We come across this advice in the books on writing. We read it in writer, editor, and agent blogs (like this one!). If you go to conferences and conventions, no doubt you’ve sat in on many a panel where they dispense advice like so much chicken feed to the starving, eager masses. But in my opinion, there are some pieces of wisdom out there that seem to be overused (though, this doesn’t make them any less applicable).
Things like:
“Write what you know.”
“Show, don’t tell.”
“Murder your darlings.”
Should such advice be applied universally? Obviously every writer is going to have a unique approach to their work, but are these three phrases ones that even generally are good to follow? Let’s look at them one at a time, but in reverse (didn’t see that coming, did you?)
“Murder your darlings”- From what I know (the amount and content of which is debatable) this piece of advice means that one must be willing to let go of a piece of writing of which you are particularly proud in order to better the story overall. This could be a clever twist of phrase that really doesn’t help the story, or a plot point that, while intriguing, doesn’t serve as anything more than word count filler. This is genuinely good advice, in my opinion, since it forces us writers to learn how to separate the meat from the gristle. I would say this advice is one people give the “yea, but…” treatment. They try to apply it to a passage of text and they say, “Yea, I could take this part out but…[insert self-rationalizing reason here].” Keep this advice in mind any time you are doing a revision, and it will help keep you on track. Yes, there are exceptions, but they better be good ones.
“Show, don’t tell.”- Another good piece of advice…however one that can get taken to an extreme. The essence of it is making sure that what you are writing is action, whether it’s physical movement of the characters, emotional conflict, dialogue, whatever. Something is happening, moving, building up to a disaster. A reader should be able to see or envision it going on. You don’t want to just write, “Susan was mad.” Boring. Bland. Blah. How about, “Susan slammed the door, kicked the cat across the room and stabbed her curling iron through the wall.” (poor kitty) Sure, it’s more words, but it’s more fun to read and you can hopefully see a clear image in your mind of someone doing these things. But…again, writers can take this to an extreme. There are times it will actually move the story faster and make it less boring by just telling the readers what happened. You can say “Ryan drove to the store,” rather than showing every minute action he goes through to get there. Learning to balance between the showing and telling is actually what you should do, not tossing one out for the other altogether.
Lastly, “Write what you know.”- Gah. Honestly, I hate this piece of advice, mainly because it sounds boring for me as speculative fiction writer. If I wanted to write a memoir, or a biography…sure, then I’d write what I knew. And yes, I know that it’s a good idea to sprinkle concrete facts throughout even the most imaginative, delirium filled works to help the reader immerse themselves, or suspend their belief a little more. But if you only wrote what you knew, wouldn’t that get tiresome? One of the biggest reasons I enjoy writing is because it forces me to face a lot of things I don’t know. Right now, for instance, I’ve been researching a whole heckuva lot about genetics. When I started out, I knew very little about genetics, except for the scraps I remembered from high school science courses. In preparing for my story, though, I’ve had a lot of fun researching, uncovering odd factoids, pursuing weird science articles and the like, familiarizing myself with the terms and such. For me, that is part of the challenge…approaching a topic I might not know a lot–or anything–about and writing about it. Writing forces me to learn, and in an incredibly immersive manner, I might add. You already know what you know. That stuff will come into your writing naturally, so don’t focus on that. Focus on what you don’t know, and see where those stories take you. There are a lot of worlds, cultures, people, and creatures out there (and in my head) that I know nothing about. I plan to learn about as many of them as I can before I die.
So, you out there. Tell me about some piece of writing advice that you have found either incredibly helpful, or one that you realized was restricting you, or limiting you in a way you didn’t see until you broke beyond it. Can these popular advice tidbits be misleading? Helpful? Confusing? Dead to rights? Let me know what you think.
I see that smile.